Bangalore

We were not in Bangalore very long, (they just changed Bangalore’s name by the way) but anyway the contrast from Kanchipuram was amazing. The Hotel we stayed at was quite fancy, although the view was not so nice because there was construction going on down the street. Anyway fancy hotel, the first night I don’t think we did anything, but got together to discuss what we had seen already. I suppose some of us watched Indian television which is a fairly unique experience, the music channels were especially popular. Artists would alternate styles within the videos from a sort of conservative suave pop singer singing love songs, to a pop diva who would fit right in in western markets, to flashy dance bollywood type songs with large heavily choreographed numbers…
We also watched a soap opera that we couldn’t understand at all, but it seemed to be based of American soaps, or British soaps but ended up more like a spoof of Spanish soap operas (which Americans tend to find hilarious) we couldn’t understand the language but they would occasionally drop a word in English. There was no sex or nudity, but there was some sexual tension implied… I think at one point they even went in to so fantasy dance numbers….

The next day we went to Symphony, a multinational IT and marketing firm and talked to the President of the company and also the Director of Human Services. The building was like a high tech office building and had some beautiful artwork, and Christmas decorations up (this is shortly after new years). In the meeting room we had remarkably nice seating around a half circle of wood desk… Aquafina and cookies were prepared… some of us were terrified that we had stepped into the wrong place.
They reassured us we were ok, but I have no idea why they agreed to see us.
The President talked about the booming Indian economy and the IT sector, also about his business and education. (American educated –lived and worked in the US for 10-20 years, was part and led the “reverse brain-drain” bringing talented Indians back to India to create business and opportunities.)
One of the interesting things they mentioned was that with IT and multiple locations the 24 hour work day was possible. The company had offices on three continents and each office could transfer their work at the end of the day to a new location where it would be picked up and worked on for the next shift.
He also talked about the booming telecommunications industry and how India was primed for it- noting that in the 10 miles from his house to the office he could work for an hour in his car using the wireless systems throughout the city, but the roads were still so bad it took an hour to go 10 miles.
The company seemed up to western standards as far as ethical business standards… It was really interesting to hear how the President of the company gave so much credit to the US, even saying that although things are down now, America would return to lead… I was not convinced.

After Symphony, we went to a local mall.
This mall was an indoor, very western style mall… but although there were many look-alike stores that sold western products, there weren’t actually a lot of actual brand name store… exceptions being Nike and Reebok, KFC, McDonalds… the mall looked and operated like most malls…

We read a story in the newspaper at the hotel about a family that had been burned alive in their house because the husband hadn’t paid what he owed to some mafia back businesses or something… the police stood by and watched apparently (unsure whether it was too late)…. The newspaper reported widespread corruption in the city.

We were asked to keep track of how many name brands we could recognize… I think most groups got around 100-150…. Bangalore is in many ways an entirely modern (as in recently built) city, at least the parts we were in. Large corporate offices, factories, building after building…